Scala 2.12.0 is now available • Hacker News Board

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#21

Post by nicktelford » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:11 PM UTC

eranation wrote: post #13

noelwelsh wrote: post #3

The right-biased Either, and the partial unification support that it builds on, are a much needed and much appreciated improvement. Really looking forward to trying out this release.

Is there a good source to read about what is partial unification for the uninitiated? Googling it lead me to this: https://issues.scala-lang.org/plugins/servlet/mobile#issue/S... which points to a formal proof of my functional programming concepts illiteracy ( http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/papers/lfp88.pdf ). Couldn't understand a word and I use scala for work... Any chance there is an easy explanation? Edit: found somet…

There's a pretty decent explanation in the release-notes: http://get-scala.org/2.12#partial-unification-of-type-constr...

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#22

Post by wpietri » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

mafribe wrote: post #15

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any tips for learning Scala? I want to learn the language, it looks very interesting, and I have some familiarity with Scheme, Haskell and Ocaml, but I just don't know how to start. What should I read? What should I build?

I have suggested Odersky's introductory MOOC [1] to many of my students and they all thought it was great. It's heavily inspired by SICP, so it should be easy, given your background. [1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/progfun1

Yes, I second the recommendation for the course. And I can happily recommend it for people who don't even plan to use Scala, but who just want to get a feel for functional vs OO approaches. Odersky sees them as complimentary, and in some sense Scala is his way of proving the point.

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#23

Post by paul_blei » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:21 PM UTC

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any tips for learning Scala? I want to learn the language, it looks very interesting, and I have some familiarity with Scheme, Haskell and Ocaml, but I just don't know how to start. What should I read? What should I build?

take a look at: http://blog.codacy.com/2015/07/03/how-to-learn-scala/

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#24

Post by denis1 » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:23 PM UTC

Philipp__ wrote: post #11

What grabbed my attention the most in terms of Scala is Dotty. New compiler for Scala, who's main goal is simplification and reorganization of language. You know it will be for real when even Martin is working on it! This language has bright future. Edit: grammar, sry.

Well Martin also worked on scalac, with all its warts & problems, so you can't say that it will be better just because he's also working on it. :)

IMO much more important is the fact that Dotty is being developed after several years and iterations of scalac. Ideally this would mean that the problems to be solved, and the different ways to solve them are known. Dotty can do this without having a large legacy inherited code base. To me this is more important.

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#25

Post by doikor » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:28 PM UTC

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any tips for learning Scala? I want to learn the language, it looks very interesting, and I have some familiarity with Scheme, Haskell and Ocaml, but I just don't know how to start. What should I read? What should I build?

The https://www.scala-exercises.org/ is a good source (though it is just exercises so might not be the best first material)

Great thing about it is that you can do it in a browser without setting up anything (requires a github account)

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#26

Post by ing33k » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:29 PM UTC

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any tips for learning Scala? I want to learn the language, it looks very interesting, and I have some familiarity with Scheme, Haskell and Ocaml, but I just don't know how to start. What should I read? What should I build?

one more resource that I found useful

https://www.youtube.com/user/DrMarkCLewis

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#27

Post by strange_aeons » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:30 PM UTC

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any tips for learning Scala? I want to learn the language, it looks very interesting, and I have some familiarity with Scheme, Haskell and Ocaml, but I just don't know how to start. What should I read? What should I build?

https://gist.github.com/djspiewak/cb72c41ac335a3a9b28b3307be... is a nice intro to the tooling/build setup.

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#28

Post by Cyph0n » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:30 PM UTC

ing33k wrote: post #26

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any tips for learning Scala? I want to learn the language, it looks very interesting, and I have some familiarity with Scheme, Haskell and Ocaml, but I just don't know how to start. What should I read? What should I build?

one more resource that I found useful https://www.youtube.com/user/DrMarkCLewis

This the answer you're looking for, trust me ;)

Once you get a grasp of the language and its extremely powerful features, pick up one of the standard books as a reference.

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#29

Post by 0xmohit » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:34 PM UTC

ThePawnBreak wrote: post #14

Does anyone have any tips for learning Scala? I want to learn the language, it looks very interesting, and I have some familiarity with Scheme, Haskell and Ocaml, but I just don't know how to start. What should I read? What should I build?

Scala School: https://twitter.github.io/scala_school/

Effective Scala: http://twitter.github.com/effectivescala/

Advanced Functional Programming with Scala - Notes: https://gist.github.com/jdegoes/97459c0045f373f4eaf126998d8f...

Re: Scala 2.12.0 is now available

#30

Post by redtuesday » Thu, Nov 03, 2016, 2:39 PM UTC

Philipp__ wrote: post #11

What grabbed my attention the most in terms of Scala is Dotty. New compiler for Scala, who's main goal is simplification and reorganization of language. You know it will be for real when even Martin is working on it! This language has bright future. Edit: grammar, sry.

> This language has bright future.

Yeah, it definitely looks good (to me). Dotty looks really promising to a layman like me especially since it's based on the machine-checked DOT calculus, so should have a better foundation than scalac. Then there are big projects like Spark, Akka, Play etc. But what I like the most about Scala at the moment is the continued effort regarding Scala.js, which seems to be one of the best compile-2-javascript projects. I like ur/web, and what comes the closest to it seems to be scala/scala.js.

I wonder if the collection redesign which is planned for scala 2.13 helps reduce the file size when compiling to js. Hello world is around ~40 kb (minified and gzipped) but goes to 100-150 kb for more involved things.